1. Aiden

Chapter One

AIDEN

One more step, and he was a dead man.

Aiden Doyle glanced down at the ominous fissure spiderwebbing beneath his hand-tooled boots and weighed his options.

A gangly elk calf thrashed just a few feet ahead, hindquarters fully submerged in the frozen lake.It was a spring bull, half-grown, with fuzz still clinging to his young antlers.Aiden might have considered him worth a hunting tag in a year or two, but that was different.That was a fighting chance, not a panicked struggle of flailing hooves carving huge chunks from the ice as the calf scrambled for purchase.Maybe Aiden was a sucker, but he hated to see anything so helpless.He couldn't stand back and watch this baby drown.

Just a few more inches, and he'd be within roping distance, but he didn't dare lift his foot.His last step had caused such a wide crack that Aiden was shocked to still be standing.A death trap of placid, alpine blue water lurked just beneath the ice, so bright it made his eyes sting from behind the polarized lenses of his sunglasses.

In the summer months, Copper Lake was a popular spot for fishing and day hiking.The water was clean and cold all year round, and wildflowers and huckleberries filled the meadows.Only hardcore hunters were crazy enough to make the snowy trek this far up the mountain in the dead of winter—and Aiden.

He wasn't hunting today. When his head got so noisy that even a rousing fuck couldn't silence it, he borrowed an ATV and tore up the backwoods trails, huffing the scents of pine and diesel and cool,gray rock until the roaring in his ears disappeared.The only cure for feeling lonely in a crowd was a brief taste of what it felt like to be truly alone.That was usually enough to send him scrambling back to humanity.

Aiden breathed deep through his nose, chomped the stick of jerky he was holding between his teeth, and made a decision.Slowly, cautiously, he slid his boot along the thin ice.

"Easy now," he said, keeping his tone low and slow despite the dried meat stuffed in his cheek."You'll pull us both down if you keep throwing a tantrum.Then you'll never get to hear the punchline."

The calf's ears swiveled toward his voice, and for a moment, the exhausted creature stopped fighting.It seemed to be listening. What Aiden said didn't matter; his soothing drone always calmed agitated animals.

Aiden fumbled to secure a lariat knot to the ATV tow rope in his hands.He'd tied the end of the rope to the vehicle's hitch, so even if he took a plunge, he'd have a fighting chance to haul himself bodily back onto solid ice.Almost there now. Just a little closer, and he'd have the perfect angle to toss the lasso around the calf's neck.He'd do the heavy pulling with the ATV.

"That's right," he murmured, swallowing hard and continuing the long, rambling joke he'd pulled out of his ass."So, this cowboy walks into a bar and orders a beer, right?The bartender asks why he looks so tired and frustrated, and the cowboy explodes.'I've been hangin' gates for so long I'm still hearin' voices!Up, down, left, right—it's enough to drive a man crazy!' But just as the cowboy's about to take his first sip, he hears a voice shout, 'Hey, nice hat!' The cowboy looks around and sees?—"

He never finished the joke. The ice cracked, louder than a gunshot, and his orientation to the world suddenly changed.He was falling before he even realized it.Icy water closed over his head, burning his eyes, and flooding his ears and nose with cold.His lungs seized up, spasming so he could barely draw breath when he broke the surface.His soaked jeans felt like weights around his legs, and his boots sliced the water without holding any tread.He fumbled clumsily with the rope, twining it around his fist to keep from losing his grip.Rallying his strength, he surged upward and threw the loop around the calf's neck, but it caught on the top prong of the antlers.He grappled with the terrified animal, half-blind with shock.

The solid ice crumbled, stranding him in a gulf of deadly water.Biceps quaking, Aiden began to haul his body weight hand over hand along the rope, inching toward safety.Suddenly the elk's head swung toward him and clocked him across the skull with its fledgling rack.

Aiden's vision flashed white and then black—and he was gone.

He opened his eyes to pitch black and the choking terror that he was drowning.He thrashed, disoriented, struggling to claw his way to a surface he couldn't see.His stomach spasmed, and he was suddenly flipped onto his side, retching up bile and lake water.Snow filled his mouth, tasting like blood, and he realized he was somehow back on solid ground.Slowly, a pinhole of light penetrated his vision.It felt like a spike to his brain.He panicked, grasping blindly at the nonsensical smears in front of his eyes.

"Easy now." The deep, soothing rumble seemed to descend from heaven, repeating the same words Aiden had spoken to the calf.There was something steady in that voice, a gravitas that cradled him, reassuring him that even if this was what dying felt like, maybe it wasn't so bad.His racing heart began to calm.

"God?" Aiden croaked, flailing for more of that sense of golden safety."Is that you?"

Then again, maybe he had brain damage.

A man chuckled from what seemed like a long distance away, and then a pair of strong hands were hooking him beneath the armpits and hauling him upright.The sudden shift to vertical drove a spike of agony through his head, and he lost his fragile grip on consciousness.

When he eventually surfaced from the darkness, he was no longer cold; he was sweating.His hands and feet burned as if made of hot coals.The harsh glare of snowpack had vanished, replaced by a dim, shadowed room.Aiden felt around beneath his body, recognizing the shape of a lumpy mattress.Dust and mildew filled his nostrils, and he realized he was lying on a bed inside an unfamiliar cabin.The single room was fashioned from rough wooden planks, with one square window and a potbelly stove squatting in the corner.His dripping clothes hung from a wire above the stove, and he lay, naked and shivering, beneath a nylon sleeping bag.

He wasn't alone. His fuzzy vision picked out the shape of a lone figure on the far side of the cabin, almost hidden in the gloom.There was something familiar about the blurred shape, but Aiden couldn't focus his watering eyes enough to be sure.A strange halo effect surrounded the man, a byproduct of backlight from a dirty, single-pane window.It made him look…magic. His hair was long, dark, and dripping, and as Aiden watched, he stripped off a wet shirt to reveal a broad, muscled back.

Aiden's pulse spiked. His blood pressure surged, and his skull began to throb.He tried to speak, but only an anxious whine escaped from his swollen tongue.

Something was wrong with that back.The shape—no, the skin. It was like a puzzle piece that didn't fit correctly in Aiden's brain, but he couldn't hold onto the thought long enough to make sense of what he was seeing.

He blinked, and the man flickered, a stuttering image on an old-school film reel.He blinked again, longer this time, and the man was gone.

When Aiden finally jerked awake, a pretty woman with soulful eyes crouched beside him.Hot pink tubes were growing out of her ears.Aiden tugged at one tube, bewildered, and she swiftly batted his hand away.

"Touch my stethoscope again, and you go back into the lake, Doyle."

The world suddenly clicked back into place."Hey, Mia," he greeted, relaxing into a grin that felt broken on one side."How's my favorite lady?"

"Better than you," she said wryly."You look like you just went three rounds in a steel cage."

"Aw, don't say that." Aiden got his elbows underneath him and struggled to leverage himself upright, but Mia pressed a hand to his chest and forced him back down.He resisted—valiantly, he thought—but a soggy cowboy was no match for the prettiest medic in the county.By the time she got him flat on his back, his stomach was churning."I think I'm going to?—"

He managed to roll onto his side just in time, and Mia shoved a plastic bag under his nose.He retched so violently that he was shocked his stomach didn't end up in the bag along with the gallons of lake water it felt like he'd swallowed.

"You're lucky," Mia said once she'd laid him back down, a sweaty, shaking mess.

He croaked out a laugh. "Yeah, I feel it."

"You could've drowned out there," she said solemnly."It's a miracle someone spotted you.It could've ended a lot worse than a concussion and some mild hypothermia."

Aiden lifted a hand to the side of his face that didn't seem to be working correctly, wincing at how tender and swollen the flesh felt around his temple.Instantly, the afternoon came flooding back: the hum of the ATV, the wind biting at his cheeks, and the cool, blue scent of frozen water.He remembered the crack of ice and a plummeting sensation, but not much after that.

"How's the little critter?" he asked, heart sinking."Did he make it?"

"I heard the trapper hauled him out after rescuing you.The guys saw tracks heading off into the woods." She gestured over her shoulder toward the two firefighters talking out on the cabin porch.

"What trapper?" Aiden batted away the blood pressure cuff she was strapping around his bicep and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.The room whirled, but he clenched his teeth and rode it out.He stood, clutching the rickety bed frame for support, and surveyed his surroundings.

Besides Mia and the bored uniforms by the door, the cabin was empty.There wasn't much by way of furniture or supplies, just a utilitarian space to sleep or ride out bad weather.If he squinted and looked beyond the open door, Aiden could barely make out the speck of his ATV sitting on the bank of a frozen lake.

"We're in the old hunting cabin near Copper Lake?" he asked.

Mia nodded.

Memory rushed him—the man with the bare back.Now that he could think clearly, he realized what had upset him so much in the first place.The man's skin had been smooth and sun-dark, even in the dead of winter, except for one jarring flaw.His left flank, where his lats curved around the ribcage, had been raised, white, and puckered.Aiden's vision had been too blurry to make out much detail in the dark, but he was sure he'd seen the trace of five individual gashes scoring his flesh—claw marks, old and faded.

Aiden only knew one man with scars like that.

"He just left?" he asked incredulously."He dumped me here and left?"

He'd been mostly talking to himself, but Mia answered."Probably didn't want to get caught with whatever game he was poaching," she said with a shrug."No other reason for Mr. Anonymous to go through all the trouble of hauling your ass out of the drink, warming you up, and calling emergency services, but not sticking around until we got here."

She had already begun repacking her gear.Aiden figured she'd worked on so many cowboys that she could recognize the signs of a man unwilling to be fussed over.

If he'd been in a bettermood, he might have sat back down and allowed her to play doctor.There was nothing wrong with a little harmless flirtation, especially when it felt like someone had been playing a rousing game of tetherball with hishead.He was already buck-naked, and she was newly divorced; maybe she could kiss it and make itbetter.

He might've taken a shot if it weren't for the hollow pain right below hisribs.Pain that had nothing to do with his close call on theice.Pain he'd forgotten, or at least tricked himself into believing he'd put behindhim.

But the tragedy of Seth McCall was hard toforget.